Dawn Temple - Moonlight and Mistletoe

Heart beating furiously, she turned the lock and wrenched the door open, finding a thunderously mad Kyle Anderson vibrating on the other side. Dressed in a new suit, he looked every inch the spit-and-polished, no-holds-barred lawyer she remembered from the ground breaking ceremony. Had the jeans and flannel guy who’d kissed her last night been a figment?

“Hey! How’d you know I was here?”

“That old heap of yours is pretty hard to miss.” He stormed past her.

Wondering what in the world he had caught in his craw, and knowing he’d tell her soon enough, she shut and relocked the door. “No sense replacing a perfectly good car just because it’s seen a few hard years.”

“And I’d imagine a new vehicle would set you back a pretty penny. Probably take a single woman without a full-time job quite a while to save that kind of money.”

Troubled by his forcefully bland tone, she wrapped her arms across her chest. She’d taken him at his word when he’d promised to back off and give her time to consider her options, but this return to bullying lawyer mode unnerved her. Was he reneging on his promise? Or was something else driving this inquisition?

“Four-wheel drive certainly doesn’t come cheap,” she answered noncommittally, heading back to the gym, Kyle close on her heels. “But my old wagon’s got plenty of good years left in her yet, so I’m not worried.”

“With any luck, if it breaks down, the youth center will let you borrow their expensive new van, since you won’t be able to afford another new vehicle for at least a decade on your income.”

She spun around so quickly that her hair clip dislodged and fell to the ground. Ignoring the wave of hair settling around her shoulders, she propped her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “What do you know about my income?”

“I ran a thorough background check on you, Shayna. I know exactly how dismal your finances are. Damn it, why continue to struggle when you could be living the good life?”

“Who says I’m not living the good life? I have friends who love me, a career I care about, a community that supports me, a beautiful home that’s paid for and a dog who thinks I hung the moon. For me, that is the good life.”

“But you could afford so much more if you took Walker’s deal. You’d never have to worry about money ever again.”

Again with the money. He was beginning to sound like a broken record.

“I don’t worry about money now.”

“That’s obvious.” He raked his fingers through his hair, knocking the edge off his frighteningly polished look. “If you did, you’d have signed that agreement and snatched up the cash.”

“I’ve already told you that I can’t be bought. Walker can keep his guilt money.”

“Quit thinking of it as a payoff. It’s his responsibility to support and care for any children he brings into his world, and for twenty-five years, Walker has shirked that responsibility. You can’t allow him to get away with it any longer.”

With sudden crystal clarity, Shayna understood the root of his stubborn insistence. Her irritation gave way to empathy. Kyle Anderson, with all his dazzling charm and brusque confidence, wasn’t interested in making her father pay for his mistake. Deep down, he was striking out at his father.

Instinctually, she yearned to wrap him in her arms and gently share her insight, but that wouldn’t work. If she wanted this man to see reason, she’d have to knock it into him.

“What a load of hooey.”

As she’d hoped, her childish word choice took some of the steam out of his anger. “Did you just say ‘hooey’?”

“Yeah. This doesn’t have anything to do with my finances, or the center’s new van, or even Walker’s ridiculous payoff. You can’t punish your father so you want me to punish mine.”

Instantly, Kyle stiffened. His brilliant, sparkling blue eyes went dark, obscuring all his inner goodness. “You don’t know a damned thing about my father.”

“Nothing specific, that’s true, but I know enough deadbeats that I could paint an accurate picture. Ruthless, abusive, degrading, cruel. Part-time criminal, full-time jackass.”

A dark look clouded Kyle’s face. Shayna’s nerve threatened to desert her, but she couldn’t quit now. He needed to face this truth, and she bet he didn’t have anyone else in his life who’d dare force him into it.

“A big, stocky guy,” she continued, working hard to keep her voice cool, free of the sympathy she knew Kyle would despise. “A bully who terrorized his son, picked on him for being a late bloomer with a big heart. And poor kid, he probably loved that son of a bitch once upon a time, until it was beaten out of him.”

“Stop. Now.” His jaw clenched so tight she could see the veins running down his neck.

Praying she’d correctly judged his character and his inherent opposition to violence, she pressed on. “Against the odds, that kid survived with his inner goodness intact, but in order to insulate himself from the past, he vowed to be as different from that horrible beast as possible. His solution-his salvation-became money. Money, power and prestige. Those were the keys to freedom, to safety. To happiness. But it didn’t work, did it?”

Tentatively, she reached up and cupped his cheek, her thumb caressing the galloping pulse in his neck. “No matter how much you achieve, you can’t shake that scared little boy. Isn’t that what you told me?”

The resentment and sorrow that had stiffened Kyle left as quickly as they had come. His body sagged, the weight of his head resting against her palm. Touched by his grief and awed by the fact that he trusted her enough to reveal such vulnerability, she feathered a light kiss over his lips before escorting him to the bleachers. With a gently insistent tug on his hand, she sat them both on the bottom riser.

Giving him a measure of privacy while keeping his hand sandwiched between hers, she focused straight ahead and waited. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, hear the sounds of his breathing as he struggled to regain control.

When he finally spoke, his voice had a rusty, ragged edge that nearly broke her heart. “I hated him.” He didn’t look at her, but his fingers tightened against hers. “I used to jump through hoops trying to please him, but nothing ever worked. Eventually, I quit trying. Then he got arrested for grand theft. They gave him two years and processed me into the system. Foster care was ten times worse than living with the old man. Always feeling like a charity case, knowing people only took me in for the money. It made me feel like a thing.”

Knowing there was only so much demon-facing a person could handle at once, she decided to deflect the conversation from his past. Besides, she needed to make a point, and she figured Kyle was finally in the right frame of mind to listen.

“Yeah, I remember that part. Before James took me in, I’d done a couple of stints in foster homes where I was just one of a dozen. Some of those people didn’t care about the kids, only their monthly payoff from the government.”

He inhaled audibly, turning on the bleacher to face her. She could see the realization on his face as her words sunk in. “That’s why Walker’s money bothers you so much, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It’s taken me a while to figure out, and now that I have, it seems so obvious. My brain understands your point about my having a right to that money and how much good I can do with it, but my heart just sees it as once more being valued as a commodity rather than a person.”

As it always did, talking about the past made her nervous, restless. Her left leg started to jiggle. “I was pretty near the giving-up point myself when James came along. He never cared about money. He sought custody because he loved me and wanted to take care of me, the way he knew Patty never had.”